


Grav-Hammers and Grifshots

by Hinn_Raven



Series: Tumblr Prompts [5]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Bonding, Gen, Weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 04:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11006472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: Grif and Carolina talk about weapons and family.





	Grav-Hammers and Grifshots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_taller_tale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_taller_tale/gifts).



> My darling friend a_taller_tale asked me for some Carolina and Grif bonding over sweet weaponry, and I am so here for this you have no idea. 
> 
> Warnings for: references to the Director's suicide.

“Here,” Carolina said, tossing the alien gun back to Grif. “In one piece.”

Grif hugged it to his chest possessively, squinting at her. “So you’re done?”

“I found out what I needed to know,” she said. Her mouth was twitching slightly beneath her helmet.

“Stop laughing at me, lady, you don’t know what it’s like. Every time I get a new fucking badass weapon, it gets snatched away and I never see it again.”

“That’s not true,” she objected. “I’ve lost plenty of weapons.”

“Oh? Like what? That pistol of Wash’s that you managed to lose in the fight in the bunker?”

It was like she’d been punched in the stomach, all the air leaving her lungs in an instant. Epsilon buzzed furiously in her mind, sending tingles down her arms.

 _< No_,> she snapped at him, realizing he was about to emerge to give Grif a piece of his mind. It wasn’t fair. Grif didn’t know. There was no way that he could have known what went down in that bunker. She hadn’t even told Wash about it. And Epsilon wasn’t telling any more than she was.

She could feel the scowl reverberating in her mind, before he pulled himself into one corner. It was the equivalent of what Carolina had done as a child, before her mother had died, stomping up the stairs and slamming the door loudly enough to shake the house so that, even though the conversation was patently over, everyone would know that she was unhappy about it.

“No,” she finally managed to say. “Uh, no, um. Back at Freelancer, there was this… hammer.”

He perked up suddenly. “What kind of hammer?”

“A Grav-Hammer,” she said. “Have you ever seen one of them?”

“Oh _man_ , I’ve seen vids on Basebook,” he said gleefully. “Those things look fucking _badass_. What did you do, throw bad guys around like in Grifball?”

She smirked, putting her hands on her hips. “ _Maaaaaybe_ ,” she said. “The gravity was off for that fight too, so there was that going for me too.”

“Fuck, that must have been _awesome_.”

“It kind of was,” Carolina said, preening just a little.

“So you don’t use it anymore?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t… practical. It’s bad for stealth. And then I lost it when the Project Collapsed.”

“That sucks dicks,” Grif said sympathetically.

Carolina shook her head. “You really used the… Grifshot?” _Maine’s old weapon?_ Carolina had picked up the thing once in practice—it had been heavy, but well balanced, the kind of weapon that required a kind of singular dedication and sheer strength that Carolina _could_ manage, but preferred not to. There was a reason she used multiple enhancements. She had never been a one weapon kind of girl.

“Yeah,” he sighed, and Carolina knew that sigh well. He missed it. Good memories there, whatever it was. She was glad her helmet hid the knowing smile that was tugging on the edge of her lips.

“Too bad the UNSC confiscated it,” she said.

“Assholes,” he muttered, and honestly Carolina couldn’t find it in herself to disagree. He sighed and sat down, still holding the alien rifle in his hands. “Kai always said you couldn’t trust the government. Should never have let that thing out of my sight.”

“Who’s Kai?” Carolina asked, tilting her helmet to one side.

“My baby sister,” he said.

Carolina blinked. “I… didn’t know you had a sister.” Siblings were a strange concept to her still, even with Epsilon living in her mind. He called her “sis”, but it wasn’t something they’d talked about or acknowledged. It was one of those things they’d just fallen into. She’d never called him her brother, at least not out loud, and he danced around calling her “sis” to her face.

He snorted. “Yeah, she’s fucking dumb. Joined the army to fucking try to _find me_. Guess she fucking got bored or something, if she missed me that much.”

Carolina sat down next to him. “Didn’t your parents try to stop her?” _Her_ father hadn’t, sure, but then again she wasn’t entirely sure he’d noticed when she joined up, too busy with his research. But regular parents were supposed to care about that sort of thing.

“What parents?” He snorted. “Mom was probably off doing god-knows-what, and our dad…” he trailed off, but the silence said enough.

“Oh,” she said. There really wasn’t much else to say. She swallowed. “My mother died when I was young,” she offered up, almost an apology but not quite. “My father was just glad to get me out of the house when I joined up.”

“What an asshole,” he said.

She laughed in agreement, and for once it wasn’t bitter or painful, thinking about him. Just a nice, easy truth. Her father was an asshole. So simple, so clean, none of the implied baggage. No ghosts, no Freelancer, no pistol.

Grif nearly fell over. “You can _laugh_?” He demanded. “Holy _shit_ , Simmons won’t believe this.”

“I laugh!” She protested, scrambling to think of an instance where she had recently—because she _had_ , surely.

She came up blank. Maybe it was there, it probably _was_ , but she couldn’t think of it. Maybe she could ask Epsilon—it seemed like something he would know.

“Sure you do,” he said, but his skepticism was obvious and she glared at him. He reached out and patted her arm. “Don’t worry, you’re still less of a stick in the mud than Wash was when we first picked him up. You’ll get there.”

“ _Wash_.” She said, bewildered. “A stick in the mud?” Sure, he was less…  soft, than he’d been at Freelancer, but he was still _Wash_ , the same guy who she’d dragged through space with a grappling hook.

“Oh god, yeah, you should have seen him. The guy had embraced his inner angst. And it took him _forever_ to loosen up, like, first he was running around insisting that we destroy Freelancer like you did with the Director, but like, when you were done with that at least you stopped there and got your shit together. The guy kidnapped Simmons after he was done with his revenge! And killed Donut!”

“… the pink guy over there?” Carolina inclined her head, where the soldier in pink armor was staring at Wash and Tucker talking with unbridled fascination and whispering conspiratorially with Sarge. She wondered what they were up to—she’d known Sarge long enough to know that the results would be chaotic. She was less familiar with the pink one—he’d only shown up towards the end of her journey with the Reds and Blues, and all she really knew about him was that he made terrible innuendos and had an excellent throwing arm.

“Well, okay, he was only _mostly_ dead, but it’s the principle of the thing!” There was a reference in there somewhere, Carolina could _feel_ it, but she didn’t know what it was.

She frowned, trying to process that. “Oh…kay?”

“Eh, guess you had to be there. But trust me. You’re starting from a better place than he was.”

Carolina felt another laugh building in her chest, but she squashed it. “Good to hear,” she said, and if there was a note of warmth in her voice, well, nobody was listening but Captain Dexter Grif. And he wasn’t about to tell.


End file.
